What’s the best way to nullify the controversy about boys playing field hockey on girls’ teams?

Create opportunities for boys to play the game in their own environment, of course.

Even
as USA Field Hockey tries to firm up plans to bring boys’ high
school-level field hockey to Pennsylvania next spring, Penn Manor field
hockey coach Matt Soto has already set the wheels of advancement in
motion.

This fall, Soto started an informal boys’ field hockey club at Penn Manor.

The
club was founded at the behest of Penn Manor sophomore Aaron Lugo, who
took an interest in the sport after talking to some of the girls on the
team, and then approached Soto in his computer processing class to see
about starting a team.

“I asked if it would be OK if we started
a boys team, and Mr. Soto said that if I got people together, he would
take time to help us,” Lugo said.

The sophomore, whom Soto
affectionately calls his “ringleader”, rounded up a bunch of friends,
and before long, the boys were practicing stick skills on fall Sundays
under Soto’s trained eye.

It’s all very informal. Soto says the
group didn’t meet as often as he would have liked, and attendance
fluctuates from four to 11 kids, depending on circumstances. But what
matters is that he’s gotten a group of high school boys to take an
interest in field hockey.

It goes a long way toward overturning the perception in America that field hockey is a female sport.

“It’s
just about breaking down that stigma,” Soto said. “This can’t be about
boys wearing kilts. It’s got to be about young men striking the heck
out of the ball. I think as soon as boys get a stick in their hands and
realize how much fun it is, they will embrace it.”

Still Soto is quick to dispel any suggestion that he’s just recruited an army of boys to feed into his girls’ team.

“I
told all our boys from the beginning that if they ever asked to play
with the girls, I’d stop coaching them,” said Soto, who has never
allowed a boy to play on his girls’ field hockey team. “And they all
said, ‘What are you talking about? We don’t need to do that, we have
our own team.’”

“Let P.E. teachers teach a field hockey
module, put a stick in boys’ hands in a less threatening environment –
because everyone has to do it – and see if they like it,” Shellenberger
said. “I think that’s something I might even do in my only classes.”

Shellenberger
has also toyed with the idea of starting a boys’ field hockey club at
Donegal that would be open to other boys in the district, but she says
she wants to run the idea by the rest of the Lancaster-Lebanon League
coaches at their meeting next week before she moves on the plan.

“I
don’t want to train all these boys, and then have them go back to their
schools and ask to play on the girls’ teams and cause a problem for
coaches who might not be willing to let them play,” Shellenberger said.
“So I’d rather get approval from the league first. My hope is that
they’ll support it, and then if there are teams that say, ‘No, I don’t
want a boy coming back and trying to play here’, as long as the
district and the PIAA rules don’t have a problem with it, I would let
boys from other schools practice with my team.”

It’s all in the brainstorming stage though.

Shellenberger
anticipates some resistance from her school’s administration and
realizes that financially, the school district is also in no position
to add sports such as boys’ field hockey.

“But I’m very on
board with what Nick [Conway] wants to do,” Shellenberger said. “I
fully support boys’ club hockey. It’s a way to grow the sport. To keep
the sport alive, we’ve got to get our men involved and get more people
excited about it.”

That’s the stance most area coaches have
taken. Carlisle’s Leslie Chilcote and Cedar Cliff’s Justin Weaver both
say they wouldn’t mind letting some boys practice with their girls’
teams in the fall if Conway’s plan to start a club system took off, and
the boys could compete in the spring.

Lower Dauphin’s Linda
Kreiser is also fully in favor of a boys’ club hockey circuit, but
she’s not quite as open to the idea of boys practicing with her girls.

“I
would probably not be open to doing that. I would not want an accident
to happen, and I already have 50 kids,” said Kreiser, who traditionally
does not make cuts. “I think you could develop a guys’ program without
the boys practicing with girls in the fall. It’ll be a club system like
soccer.”

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